Grants

Jim Murphy: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what grants her Department has granted in contravention of UK policy on restrictions, embargoes and sanctions since May 2010.

Justine Greening: It is the responsibility of all spending departments within DFID to comply with UK policy when making grant payments. In a statement to Parliament last week I reported that approximately £80,000 of UK Aid had been channelled via ring-fenced accounts held by the Ministry of Agriculture in Zimbabwe contrary to UK policy.

Planning Permission: Hampshire

Mike Hancock: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many planning appeals have resulted in local authority decisions being overturned by the planning inspector in (a) Portsmouth South constituency and (b) Hampshire in each of the last five years.

Nicholas Boles: Planning is a quasi-judicial process; it is a long-standing feature of the planning system that there is a right of appeal, just as there are with other local quasi-judicial decisions such as on licensing applications, gambling applications or parking fines.
	Since January 2008 there have been 83,507 Planning Appeal decisions for Portsmouth and 1,169,098 for the whole of Hampshire. An analysis of decisions by individual constituencies, such as Portsmouth South, is not available.
	
		
			 Portsmouth 
			  Allowed Dismissed Total 
			 2008 7,048 13,936 20,984 
			 2009 6,251 12,096 18,347 
			 2010 5,228 10,579 15,807 
			 2011 5,193 9,982 15,175 
			 2012 4,622 8,572 13,194 
		
	
	
		
			 Hampshire 
			  Allowed Dismissed Total 
			 2008 98,630 195,146 293,776 
			 2009 87,514 169,344 256,858 
			 2010 73,192 148,106 221,298 
			 2011 72,702 139,748 212,450 
			 2012 64,708 120,008 184,716 
		
	
	These figures show how the number of planning appeals received and allowed has fallen in the first year of the National Planning Policy Framework, refuting the suggestion of 'planning by appeal'.